Cloudflare, Inc., the connectivity cloud company, has announced its plans to introduce "NET Dollar," a new stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. This move aims to facilitate instant and secure transactions for the emerging "agentic web," where autonomous AI agents can conduct transactions on behalf of users and systems. The company officially announced its plans on September 25, 2025.

NET Dollar: Powering the AI-Driven Internet

NET Dollar is designed to support a new business model for the internet that rewards originality, sustains creativity, and enables innovation in an AI-driven world. As AI fundamentally changes how humans interact with the web, the underlying financial system needs to evolve to support this shift. The AI-driven internet requires a form of money that is instant, global, and secure, allowing AI agents, developers, and creators to transact automatically and reliably.

Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, stated that the internet's next business model will be powered by pay-per-use, fractional payments, and microtransactions, shifting incentives toward original and creative content. Cloudflare aims to modernize the financial infrastructure needed to move money at internet speed, creating a more open and valuable internet for everyone.

Key Features and Benefits

• USD-Backed Stablecoin: NET Dollar will be fully backed by U.S. dollars, ensuring its stability and reliability.
• Instant and Secure Transactions: The stablecoin will enable instant and secure transactions, critical for the speed and efficiency required by AI agents.
• Global Interoperability: NET Dollar is designed for global interoperability, allowing seamless transactions across different ecosystems.
• Programmable Transactions: Coding rules, triggers, and workflows can be embedded directly into stablecoin payments, making the coin programmable and adaptable for different use cases.
• Support for Microtransactions: NET Dollar will support microtransactions, pay-per-use models, and fractional payments, which have been difficult to achieve with existing payment solutions.

Use Cases

NET Dollar is intended to power various use cases in the AI-driven internet, including:

• Automated Transactions: Personal agents will be able to take instant, programmatic actions like paying for the cheapest flight or ordering an item the moment it goes on sale. Business agents could be instructed to pay suppliers when a delivery is confirmed.
• Rewarding Creators: NET Dollar will enable creators to be rewarded for unique and original content.
• Monetizing APIs and Applications: Developers can easily monetize APIs and applications.
• Compensating Content Sources: AI companies can contribute back to the ecosystem that fuels them by compensating content sources fairly.

Cloudflare's Role and the Agent Payments Protocol

Cloudflare is contributing to open standards such as the Agent Payments Protocol and x402 to simplify sending and receiving payments on the internet. The company's global network, which handles approximately 78 million HTTP requests per second and operates data centers in over 330 cities worldwide, will support NET Dollar's infrastructure, ensuring low-latency and high-throughput transactions.

Market Trends and Future Outlook

Cloudflare's move into the stablecoin market aligns with the increasing adoption of stablecoins in AI-driven transactions. Platforms are integrating stablecoins like USDC for cross-chain transfers, highlighting their growing importance in autonomous systems. Industry experts predict significant growth in stablecoin transaction volumes, potentially reaching $1 trillion by 2030, driven by institutional adoption and cross-border payments. Some analysts forecast even higher stablecoin issuance, with base cases reaching $1.9 trillion and bull cases hitting $4.0 trillion by 2030.